ActiveBase Priority™ 

• Overview

  The exponential growth of data and business requirements in dedicated, consolidated or virtual database servers creates resource peaks causing SLA deterioration and productivity losses.
  Consequently, costly computer resources are acquired to resolve these resource peaks, creating under-utilization and superfluous purchase of hardware and software.
  
  ActiveBase Priority software gives you the power to align in real-time computer resources with business objectives and priorities to optimize performance, mitigate risk and reduce costs.
  It is installed as an agent on the database server, monitoring and mapping server resources for business transactions.
  Using operational dashboards and automatic resource management rules, it dynamically identifies resource contention and allocates server CPU and I/O resources to important business transactions, jobs, batches, cycles, modules, Oracle instances and virtual environments.
  It is easy to deploy and does not require any changes in application code or database configurations.
  
  Usage examples:
    ActiveBase Priority improves response time of CRM and ERP on-line users by guarantying at least 50% server resources at all times.
    Ensures that nightly jobs that exceed their normal execution statistics will not have an adverse resource affect on other jobs.
    Manages resource allocation between databases on consolidated servers and virtual environmets.
  

• Features

  ActiveBase Priority is installed as an agent on the database server, monitoring and mapping server resources for business transactions.
  Powerful dashboard and Rule Engine allocate server CPU and I/O consumption to Oracle active sessions and OS processes according to business priorities.
  
  Each rule is built from a ´Active session matcher´ (identification criteria) and a ´Session resource action´.
  Rule matchers identify active user sessions based on client information (such as program, host, OS user and action), SQL text (Regex), Session statistics (>250 detailed stats), Time of day, Server and session CPU and Session group resource consumption.
  
  When an active user session is identified by a matcher, an action is applied in-real-time.
  Rule actions include reduce resources by X%, limit group resources by Y% and detailed audit.
  
  ActiveBase Priority includes three layers:
    A Process Manager component that throttles offensive operating system and Oracle user processes.
    An Oracle monitor combined with an OS monitor identifying in real-time server resource utilization and OS processes, monitoring Oracle instances, active session transactions and execution statistics.
    A Rule Engine for proactive resource management.
  

• Examples

    ActiveBase Priority improves response time of CRM and ERP on-line user requests by shifting processing resources from low priority jobs, reports and OS processes, guarantying at least 50% server resources to call center on-line users at all times.
  How: During peak-time (rule identifies server CPU utilization exceeds 85%), a rule identifies analyst reports using client info identification and jobs using SQL text matching, reducing their resource consumption by 50%, until peak-time is over.
  
    ActiveBase Priority enables to set resource thresholds to batches. It ensures that nightly jobs that exceed their normal execution statistics will not have a resource-adverse affect on other jobs.
  How: During night-time, a rule identifies jobs that exceed two-times their normal execution time, I/O and CPU resource consumption, notifying the system operators and reducing their resource consumption by 50% during resource peak-times, until peak-time is over.
  
    ActiveBase Priority manages resource allocation between databases on consolidated servers and virtual environments (e.g., VMware).
  How: ActiveBase Priority rules identify server peak-times, during which rules can reduce resource usage of heavy reports, jobs or transactions in one Oracle instance for improving performance of another instance on the same server.
  Virtual environmets manage resources to a whole OS (operating system), unaware of the priorities within the database transactions, batches and maintenance work. ActiveBase Priority manages the transaction level and application resource level using both powerful rule engine and an interactive dashboard. With ActiveBase Priority available CPU and IO resources can be automatically redirect to a specific business need on the transaction level or to usage groups defined by usage patterns, modules, batches and applications. Virtual environmets do not efficiently manage IO as a single offensive report can cause IO wait events to other users. With ActiveBase Priority IO contentions are easily identified and resolved with predefined rules or using our dashboard.

• FAQ

  General
   How is ActiveBase Priority different from native DBMS Resource Management (ORM) features?
  The main difference is that ORM can only manage a dedicated Oracle instance. In contrast, ActiveBase Priority can easily manage both operating system processes, other Oracle instances on the same server or virtual environments. In addition, a clear and powerful GUI rule engine ensures quick setup and substantial savings in on-going resource management maintenance. Note: having ActiveBase Priority, Oracle categories the wait events generated as type ´Oracle Resource Manager Wait Events´.
  
   How is ActiveBase Priority different from virtual environments (e.g., VMware)?
  Virtual environments manage resources to a whole OS (operating system), unaware of the priorities within the database transactions, batches and maintenance work. ActiveBase Priority manages the transaction level and application resource level using both powerful rule engine and an interactive dashboard.
  
  With ActiveBase Priority available CPU and IO resources can be automatically redirect to a specific business need on the transaction level or to usage groups defined by usage patterns, modules, batches and applications.
  
  Virtual environments do not efficiently manage IO as a single offensive report can cause IO wait events to other users. With ActiveBase Priority IO contentions are easily identified and resolved with predefined rules or using our dashboard.
  
   How can I reduce resources of sessions that run longer than 30 minutes or consume more than 100000000 I/O?
  ActiveBase Priority includes a rule matcher ´Session statistics´ identifying heavy resource-consuming sessions based on CPU or IO thresholds used by these sessions. Other possible session identification criteria are identifying potential active-sessions based on the specific request syntax (e.g., long ´select´ requests) or generated by a specific module or program (using client information matcher).
  
   Does ActiveBase Priority manage resources using 'nice' command?
  No! Nice OS commands are inaccurate and have limited efficiency. We created a Process Manager component that throttles the relevant processes_id generated by the rule engine or manually selected from the dashboard with much higher precision.
  
   How does ActiveBase Priority manage locks, so they are not overly prolonged?
  ActiveBase Priority applies resource management (i.e. suspend\resume processes) on sessions only when the process is in user mode. As latches are applied in Kernel mode and released in the same call, a process will never be suspended while holding a latch.
  
   How does ActiveBase Priority identify and manage heavy I/O consuming sessions?
  ActiveBase Priority includes an identification criteria based on session statistics. You can define session consumption thresholds and rate limits to any of the 300 session statistics provided by Oracle.
  
   How does ActiveBase Priority identify and manage Parallel Query Server sessions?
  ActiveBase Priority identifies both the query coordinator and the slave processes and manages them as a whole. When reducing a PQ session, ActiveBase Priority will reduce all slaves accordingly.
  
   How can ActiveBase help PeopleSoft applications?
  Peoplesoft suffers from batches that for some unknown reason simply never end
  (e.g., sometimes an important batch starts running full scan on large tables for hours without using indexes and without any warning signs).
  ActiveBase can prevent that from happening - as the customer will not have to “kill” the process, while ensuring that the process will not cause performance degradation to other important processes - thus maintaining SLA for important jobs, cycles and batches.
  
   What platforms does ActiveBase support?
  ActiveBase is currently available for Oracle8.0 and higher running on UNIX (HP, Sun or IBM AIX) and Linux OS.
  
   When will ActiveBase be available for DBMSs other than Oracle?
  Support for SQL Server and IBM DB2 is planned for 2010. If you are interested in ActiveBase availability for a specific platform/environment please contact support@active-base.com.
  
  Installation
   What exactly do I need to install?
  In order to run ActiveBase products, you need to install the ActiveBase server software. It is installed on the database server, with Unix HP/Solaris, AIX or Linux OS.
  
   How large is the download and what does it include?
  The download for the server software is 100M and includes documentation and management console installation.
  
   How long will it take to install and configure ActiveBase software on a single database?
  Installation only takes a few minutes. You will first install the server software, followed by the database configuration wizards and rule-pack sample. Predefined rules will be available immediately, and you will be able to define custom rules using a wizard. For most applications, creating initial rules should not take more than an hour.
  
   Do I need to change my applications or database?
  Absolutely not. ActiveBase Priority is completely transparent to both applications and databases. No client side installation is required. No database configuration change is required.
  
   What permissions do I need in order to install ActiveBase?
  You need sufficient access to allow installation of software on the server. No DBA privileges are required for the database itself.
  
   What are the resources ActiveBase Priority consumes as it is installed on the database server?
  ActiveBase Priority consumes minimal resources - about 1% CPU load, without any I/O or memory load, due to the fact that it only processes ACTIVE USER SESSIONS (usually less than 10% of total number of sessions) and does not analyze all sessions, collecting statistics only every 15 seconds (can be changed by customer).
  
  Backup
   What should be the backup procedure for ActiveBase?
  You should backup the full installation files once in: home/active/java and home/active/[activebase Product].In addition, to backup full configuration and rules you need to regularly backup home/active/[ActiveBase Product]/cfg/directory.
  
    What processes should be monitored?
  All ActiveBase products run using a single OS process that is defined during product installation-during the administration setup.
  Default service name is the machine name, but it is always recommended to add a prefix: ab_[server_name] for easy identification. The specific process name can be identified in the machine top command.
  ActiveBase also provides a script (monitor.zip found in our FTP site) that verifies user experience by testing user connection time regularly, returning error code and triggering email/SMS notification.